SEO Tycoon

**jim.thornton** · 08-13-2006, 01:48 AM

I was wondering if search engines can read (or take into account) the <option></option> tags withing a <select></select> tag?

I'm wondering because I was thinking about adding select box which is something like:

Select your city: [options]

I thought, that it might give me a slight advantage over my competition when someone types in a city with their query in a SE.

Any input??

**chrishirst** · 08-13-2006, 06:04 AM

the text in the option tags is read as body text

**ADAM Web Design** · 08-13-2006, 01:48 PM

They don't actually take the text into account at all. Especially if it's a hyperlink or something.

If you want a slight competition advantage, you're much better off building a sitemap listing the cities and linking to that sitemap in your layout itself (across all the pages of the site.)

**jim.thornton** · 08-13-2006, 03:41 PM

The advantage I was thinking of is:

query: Best mortgage rates in hamilton

If I can add the actual city name to the page for best mortgage rates, then there is just one extra word I matched. But I also wanted it to help if someone types in

query: bad credit mortgages in burlington

That way, I was thinking if I had a <SELECT> tag somewhere with all the city names in Canada, then if someone types in anthing that any of my pages are optimized for but also add in their city to try and get local companies, that I would pop up.

Is my thinking way off? Would a SELECT tag help with that??

**chrishirst** · 08-13-2006, 07:53 PM

well in the mortgage site game, I'd expect it to make not the slightest difference at all.

**jim.thornton** · 08-13-2006, 11:34 PM

why do you say that??

**ADAM Web Design** · 08-14-2006, 01:25 AM

I'm not sure what CH was thinking exactly, but I'm guessing because mortgage/RE industry website owners have a tendency to try any trick under the sun to accomplish what you're trying. If you've thought of the select box, they've done it and done it to death.

Again, as far as SEO is concerned, it's real simple:

1) Create a sitemap page.
2) Link to all the cities in Canada you want to on the sitemap page.
3) On each city page (assuming they're generated dynamically, which I suspect they are) include the title and h1 tag "Best mortgage rates in (city name)".

There really isn't much else that stands even the slightest chance at working, and even this is a bit of a longshot. But the joy of targeting Canadian cities is that most Canadian webmasters don't have a friggiin' clue what they're doing (and that's not American prejudice either...I'm from Toronto and was born here). So you may well find yourself with some Page 1 rankings without a lot of effort.

**chrishirst** · 08-14-2006, 10:28 AM

Surely you're not advocating "mad lib" spam there Adam

What is Spam? Third paragraph in

**jim.thornton** · 08-14-2006, 01:28 PM

Paragraph 4, advocates it!

ADAM and Chris... I didn't want to have a page on city in canada. I just wanted to have a cross-referencing there.

For example, on the first site I built, I had a paragraph generic to most of my pages (it might still be on some of my pages) that had the names of a few banks... It went something like: "We deal with Canada's largest banks (ie. TD Canada Trust and Scotiabank) in addition to mortgage only banks like First National and MCAP."

It wasn't worded exactly like that but it was VERY similar. BUT, when you went into yahoo and typed in a term like "scotiabank first time buyer" I would pop up on the first page (about 6 or 7).

On those pages, I also had "serving: Hamilton, burlington, cambridge, waterloo - a total of about 15 cities.

So, if someone added "Scotiabank first time buyer in waterloo" I would jump up to 2 or 3.

So... I was just trying to do something like that and was wondering if a SELECT box would generate the same advantage as having that generic paragraph and disclaimer "serving: blah blah" on it?

**ADAM Web Design** · 01:44 PM

You lost me on that explanation, dude.

Throw up a page and let's get a visual happening.

Chris...you know me better than that.

I don't necessarily advocate dumping of keywords in for the sake of spamming. I'm talking about something like this for the site map:

"XXX Company serves the following areas:"

City 1 (hyperlinked)
City 2 (Hyperlinked)
City 3 (hyperlinked)

And so on and so on.

It's easy to read, it's still user-friendly (since they can traverse the links) and as long as you don't list 5000 cities just for the sheer hell of it, then that's not really spammy.

What I have the problem with is:

Keyword 1 in City 1
Keyword 1 in City 2
Keyword 2 in City 1
Keyword 2 in City 2
etc...

**jim.thornton** · 08-14-2006, 02:38 PM

Okay, ADAM...

Go here and you will see what I mean. Notice 3/4 the way down you will see the following paragrah:

"At Moneytime.ca we have access to Canada's leading financial institutions from TD Canadatrust to Scotiabank to "Mortgage Only" companies like MCAP and First National. When things get tough we have access to Non-Conforming lenders and private mortgages as well."

Now at the bottom in the *disclaimer* you will see:

"Serving all of Ontario, Canada including the following Canadian cities: Niagara Falls, St. Catherines, Welland, Simcoe, Grimsby, Port Dover, Cayuga, Stoney Creek, Hamilton, Burlington, Ancaster, Dundas, Waterdown, Brantford, Brant County, Woodstock, London, Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph, Milton, Oakville, Mississauga, Brampton, Toronto and more. "

So people when they type in "Bad credit mortgages in waterloo" it is picking up the city name in the disclaimer which is helping me out.

Now if you got query "Scotiabank first time buyer" you will get the following results page:

scotiabank first time buyer - Yahoo! Canada Search Results

I am #6. But if you type in "BMO first time buyer" I don't come up at all.

If you type in "TD Canadatrust first time buyer" you I pop up #3.

Now... I have concluded that it is picking up the bank names in that paragraph, and because there is only 2 banks listed (td and scotia) they are the only ones triggering. And the same with the city names. If someone types in a city name that I have listed in the disclaimer then I'm okay. But if they type in a city name that isn't in the disclaimer then I'm out of luck (see below).

Here is the results page for a query in yahoo on the term "bad credit mortgages in waterloo" (I'm #5 and #7) #7 is the actual page for bad credit.

bad credit mortgages in waterloo - Yahoo! Canada Search Results

So, hopefully that clarifies it for you.

Now... I didn't want to do this in a spammy way, and therefore, I didn't want to play any tricks to make the text invisible (which beside for the SEO repercussions, I think it is bad for the use). I think it would also look funny if on a sitemap I listed all the cities as I want to have a lot more than in the disclaimer.

So... I thought a text box would basically accomplish what I want. I'm wondering if the search engines with trigger hamilton, if it is within a select/option if someone types it in? I figured I can put some functionality to it so that when they click on a city that it is useful for the user (I haven't figured out what yet?

But, I then could put that SELECT box in my header of the page or something which will get shown on all my pages, so that my pages are that much more optimized for when/if someone types in a city name.

if this is bad practice, please let me know, but if it seem logical, please let me know that too.

**jim.thornton** · 08-16-2006, 07:34 PM

ADAM... Any comments on my last post?